Farmer Ignores Brother; Gets Himself a Wife

Finding a wife in the early days of settlement in Scott Valley, Calif., was not easy. The remote region only had a few eligible young women in the 1850s. Leroy Kidder’s journal told how the Glendenning brothers, Tom and Bill, dealt with the situation. The tale goes like this:

The pair had been bachelors for years when, in exasperation, Bill told Tom, “See here, Tom, you have to march off and get yourself a wife, or I will go and get me one … This thing of working in the field, and in the house, too, when there is many a good lass that would be glad to share it with you, is all nonsense.” Tom replied, “What good would a wife be to me? I wouldn’t pay the dentist bill on the best woman in America.” So, Bill Glendenning packed his bag, traveled to San Francisco, caught a steamer to Panama, and returned to his boyhood home in the East to fetch the woman he’d known in his youth. There’s no record of Tom’s reaction when Bill came home with his bride. Today, descendants of the Glendenning family still reside in Scott Valley.